May 11, 1998

Column By Tony Kant

Right about now, all over Vancouver Island, home gardeners are nurturing precious bedding plants, feeding and watering them and hardening them off, getting ready to plant them outside where they will respond to the sunshine and warmth that sustains all growing things.

This annual rite of spring has been going on for years and will continue into the foreseeable future. People find comfort and joy in the thought that these seedlings will become vigorous, health plants capable of providing food in the form of vegetables, beauty in the form of flowers, and in some cases healing and well-being in the form of certain herbs. It is the latter category that will prove the most troublesome, especially if you are one of the thousands of Islanders who grow the herb cannabis sativa in your garden.

Cannabis, commonly known as hemp, is considered a narcotic by the federal government and you could end up in jail for growing it. Just why this is so is beyond comprehension for some people, especially a Vancouver Police officer who has some ideas on drug enforcement that run counter to the usual propaganda that RCMP headquarters wants the public to see.

Constable Gil Puder, a member of the Vancouver Police force for the past 15 years, does not go along with the official federal government position on cannabis –in fact he objects to it strenuously and has even gone as far to speak publicly against the barbarian pot policy we live with. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard a police officer disagree with the government’s position on the substance but it’s certainly the first time we’ve seen it done in the glare of public scrutiny.

Puder, the story states, accused police representatives of misinforming the public about the dangers associated with drug use. Some officers have unnecessarily shot and killed unarmed people while making drug arrests,, adding that until police accept that they cannot win the war on drugs, the killing will continue.

Puder has not exactly enamored himself with the chief of the Vancouver Police with his earlier statements about decriminalizing drugs but he really got Chief Bruce Chambers’ dander up when he found out Puder intended to give a speech at a public conference sponsored by the Fraser Institute. Puder’s speech was titled Recovering Our Honor: Why Policing Must Reject the War on Drugs." This was contrary to a direct order from the chief who told Puder that anything Puder said at the conference would need his approval.

Const. Puder stood up at the conference anyway and made the following comments: While strongly believing in devotion to duty, I subordinate the unique requirements of my profession to my to my responsibilities as a human being, a parent and a Canadian citizen who has no desire to raise his children in a country torn by needless criminality." Outlawing narcotics and trying to enforce the law is history’s most expensive failed social experiment, said Constable Puder, who is also a part time instructor at the B.C. POlice Academy. Billions of dollars and countless lives have been spent to prove that criminal prohibition does not protect society, he added.

Some of Constable Puder’s criticism of police enforcement include: 1. Drug-related arrests can be extremely easy to make and officers who make them are rewarded with promotions and large amounts of overtime pay to cover court time. But police rarely catch the wealthy drug lords. 2.Self-proclaimed police drug experts readily contradict scholarly analyses and medical research with smear tactics and conjecture. "Law-enforcement spin doctoring reinforces the theory that the truth is war’s first casualty." The constable recommended that as an alternative to the so-called war on drugs, police should make fundamental changes to their strategies and a government-regulated distribution system for marijuana should be instituted and research projects should be undertaken on the decriminalization of narcotics.

My congratulations go out to Const. Gil Puder for his enlightening approach on this subject.